San Fernando quarterback Cris Solano has thrown for 1,522 yards and 19 touchdowns this season.
JOHN MCCOY – STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

It’s a big event whenever neighborhood rivals San Fernando and Sylmar meet on the football field, but especially so at 7 p.m. Friday because two of the City Section’s top quarterbacks are going head to head.

San Fernando’s Cris Solano is the established star, a returning All-City Section senior who last year passed for more than 3,000 yards in leading the Tigers to the City Division II championship.

Sylmar’s Clarence Williams is the challenger. He has home-field advantage, and the sophomore will take any edge he can find after being called up last season midway through his freshman year.

If he can steal a few scenes to make the marquee by coming through with a good-enough performance to upset the favored Tigers, Williams can thrust himself into the spotlight.

“It’s a big game. It’s going to be intense, and I’m excited to come out and play,” Solano said. “As far as being a big favorite, whatever way people want to put it, it’s OK. Every year, there is always a lot of hype when we play Sylmar. We just need to stay focused.”

Williams and the Spartans might be the underdogs, but that was the prevailing opinion last year when the youngster orchestrated a 47-40 double-overtime win over San Fernando — a night the returning Tigers surely remember.

“Last year, that was a great game,” Williams said. “I’ll always look forward to playing San Fernando because the team that wins gets the benefit of being able to do the talking for the rest of the year, and last season it was us.”

Both quarterbacks are performing exceptionally well, but Solano has been out of this world in helping San Fernando win every game by 14 or more points with the average victory margin of 28.1 points — which means Solano and his teammates have yet to be seriously challenged.

Solano has completed 65.2 percent of his passes (73 of 112) for 1,522 yards and 19 touchdowns — an average of more than 300 yards per game. He has also rushed for a team-best 495 yards and five touchdowns.

“He’s having a great year,” San Fernando receiver Jose Camargo said.

Added San Fernando coach Robert Garcia: “We’re on a roll right now, so Cris just needs to do his job. He’s a senior, and he has to execute and run our offense, and he has to live up to expectations and take what the defense gives him and go with it.”

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Williams has been steady, though his numbers are not as spectacular.

The sophomore has completed 50 of 97 for 832 yards and 14 touchdowns while scoring three touchdowns.

But as one of the area’s youngest starting quarterbacks, Williams is getting better each time out, and Sylmar coach Chris Richards believes Williams eventually will be the best around — and that includes the Harts and Oak Christians and Alemanys of the local football landscape.

“Honestly, Clarence is one of the best quarterbacks in the area right now, but by the time he leaves — and yes, he has a lot of things to work on — but by the time he leaves, without doubt he will be one of the best of all time to ever come out of the area,” Richards said. “I honestly believe that.”

Williams has all the tools, and it’s now it’s just a matter of refinement, Richards said.

“He’s just so intelligent, a student of the game the way he checks off plays at the line of scrimmage, and he just has a firm grasp of what he needs to do,” Richards said. “Plus, Clarence is just an explosive athlete, an explosive player.”

Both have lots of good receivers, and that helps.

San Fernando features Camargo and Charles Bell, and Sylmar has Danny Mendoza, Anthony Muse and Andrew Simpson.

Camargo has 34 catches for 622 yards and four touchdowns, and Bell has 18 receptions for 529 yards — a whopping average of 29.4 yards — and eight touchdowns.

Mendoza, Muse and Simpson are all underclassmen, just like Williams. Mendoza has 14 catches for 406 yards and three touchdowns, Muse has 11 receptions for 237 yards and five touchdowns, and Simpson has nine catches for 125 yards and four touchdowns.

The onus is on Williams to get the ball to his receivers and to avoid San Fernando’s pass rush because the Tigers figure to do everything possible to make life miserable for him.

“Clarence Williams is a great athlete. He’s going to be the real deal — when he’s a senior,” Garcia said. “He’s going to throw touchdowns here and there, but our plan is to get him frustrated and give him some different looks on defense to confuse him and get him to throw an interception or something.”

As the underdog, Williams is the one who must play above his head and find a way to make his teammates play better than usual.

“I feel like my teammates are looking to me as a game-changer, so I guess you can say I need to carry my team as a leader and as one of the team captains,” Williams said.

The schools are located just a few miles apart, and between them they have the most football success of anyone else in the Valley Mission League.

It’s a natural rivalry magnified by the importance of the end result in terms of the league race and positioning for the Division II playoffs.

“I understand we’re the underdog, maybe even a big underdog, but we were a big underdog last year and look what happened,” Richards said. “We’re looking at this as a regular game that we’re preparing to win, and that’s the bottom line. At the end of the day, if we’re ahead on the scoreboard at the end, that’s all that matters.”

Winning the championship last year wasn’t good enough for San Fernando.

The program that once featured Heisman trophy winner Charles White in the 1970s — when the Tigers once won back-to-back Division I championships — is trying to re-establish itself as a City Section power, a program that can stand tall with bigger City programs like Birmingham in the San Fernando Valley and Crenshaw, Narbonne, Venice and Dorsey on the other side of the hill.

A loss tonight would take a big chunk out of San Fernando’s mojo, and Solano has vowed not to let it happen.

“We’re climbing that hill, and we’re almost back on the football map,” Solano said. “Everyone thinks last year was a fluke, so we have to come out and prove everyone wrong.”